How massaging and moisturizing my vulva helped transform my relationship with myself
Before I started Wild Lily Organics I was working as a licensed Esthetician for 15+ years. My job has always been taking care of my clients skin, but skin care is not limited to the face. The skin of and around the vagina is as delicate and requires the same gentle and loving touch as our beautiful and unique faces.
So let me tell you, YES I have seen my fair share of vaginas, and we all have a name for her… Vag, Vajayjay, Lady business, Hoo-haw, Cha-cha, Punani, Poon, Honey Pot, and the one I personally like to express Yoni. But whatever the name, when clients would come to me I would see time and again that they were dealing with an assortment of emotions including embarrassment, shame, confusion or disdain for this sacred region of their bodies. The skin either very dry, showing redness, ingrown hairs and other skin irritations. But here is the truth, I had some of the same symptoms. I had questions, that my technical education in skin care had not answered. I was using products that were supposed to soothe, hydrate and cleanse but were not living up to their purpose.
I wanted to help my clients as well as I could so I began researching, questioning and learning more. I learned about parabens and how prolific these preservatives are in cosmetic care products. How parabens can cause ingrown hairs, and how to prevent ingrowns when waxing by hydrating the skin well pre and post hair removal treatments, by exfoliating and avoiding using certain cleaners, wipes, and creams that clog the pores. I got to work on my own sustainable Yoni Oil product with natural organic ingredients with no preservatives and began using and testing them on myself.
The change I witnessed, changed me!
The difference in my skins texture, ph balance, moisture, everything got better and I began having a new relationship with my yoni that I never had before.
I came to realize that all I have been taught about my vagina still left me uninformed about myself. If I hadn’t taken all this information in at face value but instead looked a little deeper and put my health and needs first, maybe I would come to learn more about us divine females. How to take care of our skin concerns and complaints but moreover, offer a guidance that could help other women at the root, where it truly mattered, offering products and practices that were safe and effective with a message meant to truly heal.
Instead we learn strategies to alleviate discomforts that ultimately return. To take a synthetic birth control to manage cramps, PMS, and skin breakouts. We plug ourselves with unsterile fibers and GMO cottons that have been dowsed in bleach and pesticides all while risking toxic shock syndrome, pelvic inflammation, and an accumulation of toxins that are rarely if ever accounted for as hormone disruptors. The effect parabens have on the skin superficially and then the horrific truth-exposing studies that have brought to light deeper health issues including harm to fertility and reproductive organs, birth outcomes, and an increased risk of cancer (Environmental Working Group, 2019). It has taken years for industry and governments to heed the evidence of hundreds of scientific studies done over the last 2 decades and begin making hard bans on the use of harmful parabens in cosmetic care products that are only being implemented in these more recent years.
We bypass what we are feeling throughout any given month, the highs, the arousal, the daringness, and the lows, the withdrawal, the low energy and sensitivity. It gets explained away with “oh it’s that time of the month again” or “yes, that is a common result of waxing” or “if I take the pill he won’t have to wear an uncomfortable condom”. We are left to believe in all these common cultural expectations, also known as folkways or mores, these cultural expectations are also a societal consensus that leaves women with a burden and baggage that ultimately needs unpacking. When in Truth, there is so much more going on. I feel empowered having learned how to honor myself and my body through every moon cycle. I feel empowered in how I have learned to care for myself differently. Understanding that this area of the vulva is so neglected, so forgotten and the beauty of a woman is her sexuality, is her womb, her creativity, her femininity, that’s the root of her sacred beauty. So if you are not loving yourself here first, at the base, at the root, then everything else is going to be out of balance. It is about really honoring ourselves and honoring the goddess within. I have gained new insights as I have learned how our ancestral women would gather and celebrate a young girls first period, how we used to gather to sit and bleed together, sharing our stories and wisdom, how we gathered to support and honor the birth of new life and the unabashed expression of feminine sensuality, its allure, its power. I am on this journey towards this formless woman, she does not look any certain way, it does not matter her color, race, creed, class, religion, education, or generation. The connection to this woman is through feeling and sacred ceremony and touch. Unlearning what is thought to be true about feminine beauty, sex, masturbation, mensuration and ovulation, pregnancy, birth, menopause, all of it!
I have found sacred beauty.
The beauty that is to be unearthed and discovered.
We and our vaginas at not simple and obvious. The vagina respective to each one of us female priestesses is unique, positioned, formed and expressed differently. Our vaginas are another example of our individuality, our own fingerprint, unlike any one else.
We have been taught to pay no mind to the gate that lies at our root and it’s relatively easy to ignore it since our vaginas and all its beautiful parts are out of sight. If you want to lay eyes on her you have to set quite the stage, comfortable place to lie down, good lighting, a hand held or full body mirror (both of which bring their own disadvantages), be willing to look, touch yourself and inquire. We have been taught that like other bodily secretions they are disgusting, repellent, wipe it up, clean it up, make the environment as sterile as possible. Plug it, douche it, perfume it, ignore it and maybe just maybe she will be asked to come out of hiding by anothers invitation. Since when do we need an invitation to show up? Since when does the glory and bloom of my vagina need to wait in darkness and only sing her sweet symphony when being called by another person. The sole purpose of my vagina is not to be in service to another but first and foremost to guide me home to myself, to teach me of my own bounty, my own creativity, my own ability to house life itself, and feel through the cycles of life. That is my divine feminine essence, my power and where my wisdom is housed.
But we have been denied the existence of our sacredness, denied and told that there is no ceremony to behold, our mechanisms are just that, a machine, that which operates without our participation, without our understanding and moreover, without a purpose to reflect back on to us offering a poetic language to know and love ourselves more deeply.
It is my wish that you call upon yourself, lean into the wisdom and knowledge that awaits as you begin to explore the tangible form that is your vagina as well as the rhythms and phases of your moon cycle. There is a poetic ancestral way of connecting with our female form that is pregnant with meaning ready to guide you back home.
The vagina connects our womb to the outside world and it is our womb that is the cite of creation - life, death and rebirth - we hold these profound rites, this deep knowing, the capacity to cultivate, to shed, to grow, transmute and evolve.
Practice fully accepting your Self, your vessel.
This is a sacred beauty ritual, giving yourself that loving touch and inviting every part of you.